Where Have The Loons Gone?

As a child, I spent every summer in my family cabin in the Adirondack region of New York State. Along with my grandparents, we would spend many nights out on the lake reveling in the beauty of its immense Loon population. We were fascinated by the way they would dive underneath the water and appear moments later many yards away or the way they would expand their wings seemingly tripling in size. As I grew older, I noticed the population began to diminish to the point where the Wildlife Protection Agency had to ban fishing on the lake in order to keep the loon's food supply adequate. While not yet endangered in NY, the loon is listed as a threatened species in both Michigan and New Hampshire and Vermont's loon population has been listed as endangered since 1987.